Unsold supplies of U.S. corn on Dec. 1 were 7.9 percent smaller than a year earlier and the lowest in four years, the government said.
Inventories on Dec. 1 were 10.04 billion bushels, down from 10.902 billion a year earlier, the U.S. Department of Agriculture said today in a report. Consumption in the three months through November was 4.11 billion bushels, up from 3.86 billion a year earlier. Analysts surveyed by Bloomberg News expected inventories of 10.063 billion bushels, on average.
“The report will serve to underscore a tightening supply situation that is increasingly dependent on a good growing season in the Northern Hemisphere in 2011,” Jim Gerlach, the president of A/C Trading Inc. in Fowler, Indiana, said yesterday. “We have yet to slow demand, and that means rising prices.”
The report was released before the start of regular trading on the Chicago Board of Trade, where corn futures for March delivery was unchanged yesterday at $6.07 a bushel. The most-active contract reached $6.34 on Jan. 3, the highest since July 2008. The grain surged 52 percent last year on record demand to produce ethanol and livestock feed.
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